Pertino rolls out world’s first cloud network app store

Networking startup Pertino thinks there’s a hunger in the market for cloud-based networking services — but not just its own.

The Los Gatos, Calif.-based company today launched its cloud-based networking app store. The AppScape store, which offers additional functionality for Pertino‘s software-defined networking (SDN) infrastructure, will only feature Pertino-developed apps at the outset but will open up to “name brand partners” in early 2014 and all developers later that year.

There is just one app available at launch, GeoView, which offers a geospatial view of your network. It’s basically a security feature for IT professionals: If an employee’s PC shows up in Russia — and you know she’s not in Russia — there’s a good chance somebody has hijacked the device, so you can remove it from the network with a few clicks.

SafeSpot, another app coming in early 2014, encrypts all your Internet traffic on both the Pertino network and the public Internet.

Above: Pertino’s Todd Krautkremer demos AppScape

“So [with SafeSpot] we’re encrypting traffic from my PC, through the Starbucks LAN, all the way to our node in the Internet,” explained Todd Krautkremer, vice president of marketing at Pertino, during a demo at VentureBeat’s New York office. “That gives you hotspot protection so nobody can sidejack you and access your machine while you’re sitting there in Starbucks, which happens quite a bit, sadly.”

AppScape is the front-end of Pertino’s network function virtualization technology, which takes network services and plugs them into virtual networks. For it to succeed, Pertino needs to convince a bunch of enterprises to sign up for its SDN-powered cloud network services, because no one is going to build apps for an empty marketplace.

The SDN market is just taking off — less than 10 percent of enterprises run significant production traffic through virtualized networks today, according to one recent estimate — but major players are making big bets on the space. VMware recently announced its NSX platform, putting the software giant into direct competition with Cisco, which has its own vision for SDN.

Pertino’s network features similar redundancy and failover capabilities as those offerings, but the company thinks its proprietary technology sets it apart. One feature, called “beat the stack,” enables Pertino to switch data centers without breaking your TCP connection. But the big difference, stressed Krautkremer, is that this all happens over the wide area network, not inside the data center.

“Right now, that’s what sets us apart,” he said. “I’ll tell you for a fact that we will not be the only ones doing this — no big market opportunity goes uncontested — but we are the first.”